


Polished Stones

by Analinea



Series: Living Without Your Name [1]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst, France (Country), Gen, Grieving, Hopeful Ending, I have no idea what to add, I should let my cat tag for me, Mention of Character Death, Past Character Death, moving to France, not graphic, post season 3B
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-12
Updated: 2016-04-14
Packaged: 2018-06-01 21:19:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,046
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6536677
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Analinea/pseuds/Analinea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hours in the airport, in the plane. Not a single minute of sleep. Isaac didn't sleep much lately, outside of the days he couldn't get out of bed. He stepped out of the international terminal of Nice airport and warm foreign air suddenly hit him. It smelled of salt and pine trees, mixed with fumes and trash. It was nothing like home. Everything he needed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. 1 – Don't move your aching body

**Author's Note:**

> Before I got myself into writing fanfiction, I liked the idea of running into Isaac in the street after he moved to France. 
> 
> Then I played a game of "loups-garous de Thiercelieux" (which apparently exist in English under the name "werewolves of Miller's Hollow, and if you have at least 8 friends to play with, you should totally try it!) and got the idea, and since it's me it turned into angst...  
> I have all the chapters written, if you're worried! :)  
> Anyway, enjoy! If I forgot a tag, feel free to tell me! If you just liked it, also feel free to tell me ;)

**1 – Don't move your aching body**

 

Chris spread out a map of France and told him to pick any place. Isaac looked at it with tired red rimmed eyes, and took a second to think about it. The distraction was welcomed at this point. He leaned over it. Paris? Too big. Too much of a romantic symbol. The rest of the names didn't mean anything to him.

He looked at the borders then. He liked the idea of being in a different country in less than an hour, passing a sign indicating that on the other side people spoke another language and had other values. It felt like freedom, maybe. It felt like a possible escape route.

Not something too north. There's the Mediterranean sea down in the south, and right over it the Alps, forming some sort of cradle. It feels safe, somewhat. Next to Italy, then.

“What's the biggest city there?” Isaac asked in a cracked voice, his finger landing in the general area. When was the last time he spoke?

“Marseilles.” Chris answered with a frown. Isaac lifted his finger and took a better look. Still too big, and Chris' frown was not a good sign. The teen followed the sea line with his eyes and _there_.

“Here.”

Chris glanced at it and nodded. “Okay. Nice it is.”, he agreed, the town name sounding like “niece” and running away. The man turned back and sat at the desk in front of his computer, opening up pages that Isaac couldn't see from where he was while dialing a number and speaking French in the receiver.

Isaac eyed the map a few seconds more. Took his phone out of his pocket. He already said his goodbyes and he had nothing to add. He lighted up the screen and pressed a button until it became dark. He wouldn't need that in the near future.

The teen went to pack what he would take with him, ignoring the white closed door and the smell still behind it. In a bag lying around he threw a couple of clothes he had there, an old journal that never left him, a faded photograph. Her favorite book. It wasn't much. He didn't need more.

 ▪

Hours in the airport, in the plane. Not a single minute of sleep. Isaac didn't sleep much lately, outside of the days he couldn't get out of bed. He stepped out of the international terminal of Nice airport and warm foreign air suddenly hit him. It smelled of salt and pine trees, mixed with fumes and trash. It was nothing like home. Everything he needed.

A cab took them to the duplex apartment Chris owned. The man took care of everything and Isaac didn't even bother to ask him the wheres and hows.

The car trip was as quiet as the last week and the view was unfamiliar, big buildings lining up the sea front and a walk filled with jogger and bicycles, beaches made of gray stones. Isaac felt disconnected. Numb.

He barely looked at his new apartment, the big rooms with discreet decorations and furnitures made of dark wood and colorful tiles. He entered the bedroom on the second floor with it's own red and white marble bathroom and collapsed on the bed into a dreamless sleep, jet lag catching him up.

He almost wished he would never wake up, or at least open his eyes to home a few months back. This, this could've been just a dream.

 ▪

Summer passed in a blur. Long too hot days, and looking back realizing that weeks went by and we did nothing of it. Laying wide awake in bed listening to French music and not really watching French movies with the fan on, trips to the big supermarket in town by nightfall when the outside temperature was more clement. Trying to sleep with windows open that did nothing to cool down the air.

Isaac learned a lot by listening to street chatter: the inflexions of the voice, the expressions, mostly the insults. French was more flat than Italian, but still had some music to it if you didn't focus on the words. He also liked to decipher the packages of food and buy things he never heard of. This was a new environment, and the new language was an easy escape from the thoughts that plagued him so much when he reverted back to the flow of his native English.

He didn't do much more than that, thought. When he wasn't in his room or on trips to the supermarket, he was sitting in the living room watching Chris work on his computer.

The hunter started to work with a European branch of hunters, going out for two or three days at a time and never talking about what he did during that time. All Isaac knew was that their ways here were different from the U.S.'s ones.

The two didn't talk much. Chris filled out the silences with stories so old that nothing from them could get to either of the men. The teen didn't really listen anyway and Chris probably knew it, only talked because doing something was his way of coping. He didn't stop to think about it. Isaac on the other hand, stayed as still as possible so reality wouldn't notice him.

 ▪

Sometimes at night, as Isaac stayed up until exhaustion took him into a dreamless sleep, he looked at his phone. For hours he stared at it. His mind stayed carefully blank, void of any of the names that he knew he could find in his contact list if he turned the device on again. Void of the names he never deleted.

 ▪

Summer ended. Chris had asked, “Is there anything you want to do this year?”

Isaac shook his head. Maybe next year...he abandoned the line of thoughts. Next year was far away, an abstract thing. He wasn't used to plan his life that far yet. His time as a werewolf with life or death crisis wasn't really to blame for it, neither the disappearance of his friends. It was far deeper rooted in him.

September came, and suddenly shitloads of students invaded his streets. He learned then that two blocks north there was what they called a campus but was nothing like American ones. Curiosity made him drift from his usual path, and what he saw were three buildings huddled around tramway tracks and a parking lot that made him wonder how the cars could still get in and out. A quick search made him realize it was only one of the so called campuses in town, and that each one of them more or less housed one field of study.

It made him think, for all but a couple of minutes. He asked Chris if he ever went to college, and the man looked at him with something akin to regret in his eyes when he answered that no. Isaac understood being stuck in a path set out by your family and seeing no way out. Maybe even not realizing there were other options at all.

“What would you have studied?” the teen added quickly, before talking himself out of asking. Chris seemed to think about it for a few seconds, before turning his head back toward Isaac.

“I don't even know.” he said.

After that, Isaac got college out of his mind and went back to his habits. Eat, sleep, do nothing, grocery shopping. He found himself looking more and more to the young customers there that talked loud and laughed with one another. Flatmates and couples, stirring sadness and bitterness and anger before Isaac remembered he was too tired to feel all those emotions.

So he sighed and instead of trying to understand the feelings it sparked in him, he turned his back on them and browsed the shelves. He didn't need to think about what he was doing in a strange town in a strange country, walking two streets of it and nothing else. He didn't need to think.

 

▪

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I already have another story done for this serie, more of a companion fic about another character! I'll post it next week, and depending on the success of these two I'll try and write more for it!
> 
> Next chapter should be up tomorrow! If I forget you can yell at me in the comments or on my [tumblr](http://kinsbournescream.tumblr.com/) ! Tell me what you thought of this first chapter :)


	2. Stretch out your tired muscles

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> New chapter! Hover over the small bits in French for the translations! When it's in italics it means they speak French :) Enjoy!

 

**2 – Stretch out your tired muscles**

 

Isaac was bored. So. Bored. He was tired of watching TV, the sounds becoming irritating instead of a comforting way of filling up the silence. Chris was gone for a week, and if two days alone were no big deal Isaac quickly realized he liked having a friendly but quiet presence with him. The teen rolled on his stomach on his bed and stretched his arm to reach his computer on the ground. He opened a search engine.

He found himself in the middle of a busy street half an hour later, tramways aggressively dinging at cyclists behind him. There was so many more sounds here than in the streets Isaac was used to, making him twitchy and uneasy. He sighed and entered the relative quiet of the store.

He wandered for a few minutes on each floor, admiring the quality of the new TVs but turning away at the voice of a friend gone what seemed like aged ago, flipping her golden hair behind her shoulder and smirking _What do you think about a big flat screen TV in this corner of our lovely abandoned subway station?_ (what color were her eyes?).

Stopping in the DVD's and CD's section just long enough not to see the unamused look of another ghost with headphones on that did nothing but broadcast the classical music to the rest of the werewolves and saying _It's very calming you should try it_.

 _Well we are now_ the first voice had said in a annoyed tone demented by the light in her eyes.

Isaac finally got to the last floor, rows of comics greeting him, the colorful covers helping him escape the memories. Here, he would find what he's looking for: books. He wanted to read, and to read in French.

Decision he was starting to regret now, standing in front of a shelf of fantasy and science fiction books. He had never been a big reader but recently someone made him start enjoying the weight of the story in his hands and the quiet turning of pages. He had stopped after being thrown out of the first real home he had.

“Besoin d'aide?” a voice came from beside Isaac. He turned to see a short blond girl next to him.

“Um...oui?” he answered self-consciously. He never really talked to anybody outside of the hello goodbye and thank yous to cashiers.

“Ah, vous êtes pas français?” she added with a small smile, and he was pretty sure shaking his head was the right answer. He became good at understanding French in the past few months doing nothing but listening, but he never really practiced talking. It never bothered him before, and he had a split-second realization: he had reverted back to his shy pre-werewolf self.

“Sorry”, she laughed lightly, “you're looking for something specific?” She had a thick accent, but nothing so bad that he couldn't understand her.

“Um...” Isaac hesitated, glancing back at the intimidating wall of books in front of him, “something easy? I have the basics, I just need vocabulary, I think...”

She narrowed her brown eyes at him, like she was evaluating him. Then she went to the far end of the self and took out a book before giving it to him. He grabbed it reflexively. The cover read “La Quête d'Ewilan”.

“I'm not really an expert, but I think this one shouldn't be too difficult. You can always bring it back if I'm wrong. And!” she added enthusiastically, “it's a hundred percent French!”

“Okay.” he said, offering her a smile that felt odd on his face, “thanks.”

He almost turned to the escalators to go back on the first floor, but froze when he suddenly realized what felt weird. This had been his first smile in months. So he looked back at where she was still pensively considering what to buy.

“Uh...” he started, mentally wincing at how he seemed to be at loss for words today. As if buying books wasn't enough, he suddenly had a flash of one brooding ex-Alpha. The girl turned to him with questioning eyebrows.

“Do you...est-ce que,” he stammered, the words foreign on his tongue, pausing to think about how to translate what he wanted to ask and wondering if it wasn't too straightforward, “est-ce que tu as du temps?”

“Ça dépend pour quoi.” she shot back, not seeming bothered by the question but genuinely curious.

 ▪

 _Camille_ , she had introduced herself after Isaac asked if she could show him around a little, _and that now I feel like I have to justify the book. He was my favorite author when I was a teen, and he died a couple years back. I'm still not over it._

Isaac had nodded, smiled, and promised to try and read it to the end. He shuddered when she told him that it was the first of a serie, a laugh in her voice.

He tried to talk in French with her, practicing his pronunciation while they walked down the busy street full of shops and got to a park with a big fountain and some trees to sit under.

Camille plopped down there and told him they would start with thinking about life, the universe and everything because she was too tired to show him the good stuff today. It had made him both warm and anxious, this promise of “we'll see each other again”.

 ▪

Isaac had his first nightmare in months that night. He didn't know how he escaped even dreaming in all this time. He learned a bit about how they worked during the last months at home. They are during the night what you don't allow to be here during the day, half made of real events and of what you won't let yourself think about. So he figured that at some point his denial would come and hit him with a vengeance.

So he dreamed. _He's in the tramway, which doesn't make sense at all because his claustrophobia keeps him from getting in one of those and he walks everywhere. Somehow, here, it doesn't bother him at all. Until it does._

_The tramway is Deaton's clinic, and when Isaac looks out the windows he can see the tiny street of the old town he quickly visited today on his way to the bookstore, too narrow for the tramway cars to pass in between but it does anyway. That's when it starts to feel too tight._

_Isaac looks for a way to get out of there, searches for the door he knows is somewhere in the waiting room, but there's only walls and stairs illuminated by rows and rows of neons lights diving deep into the earth. He turns to the middle of the room and there's a short blond girl standing with her back facing him._

_He calls “Camille?”, and when she turns back to him she has the girl's face but somehow,_ condensation _his memories of reading about dreams tell him, it's Allison. He takes a step back, breath stolen from his lungs, and he falls, falls, falls._

Isaac woke up abruptly, soaked in sweat and confused. When he walked in the kitchen to grab a glass of water, he found Chris there looking over some papers with a drink hanging by his fingertips. The teen glanced at the clock displaying 3:13 in bright green digits, and back at the man sitting at the table with his eyebrows raised in question.

Without saying anything, he grabbed his water and slumped down on the other chair, stole a blank piece of paper from the stack in front of him and a pen, and started drawing.

Chris eventually got back to what he was doing before as Isaac started to draw with the uneasiness of someone that didn't touch a pencil in years but the need that comes with the habit of exorcising demons with it. They didn't talk about it in the morning.

 ▪

Isaac actually stayed in touch with Camille, via the new phone he bought himself with a contract for France only. With her, he visited what she called the most important parts of town, and when he said that he couldn't get in buses or tramways she looked at him and laughed. “ _The nicest places to visit are pretty much around old town so you can walk. If you really want to go to Cimiez or Park Phoenix, we can find someone to take us there by car.”_ she had said.

They talked a lot. Well, she talked a lot, asked some question and didn't seem bothered with his short answers. He never gave anything, really, of his past. When Camille asked where he was from, he couldn't bring himself to say Beacon Hills out loud, as if the town's name was some kind of curse. So he simply said _California_ and she looked at him intently and changed the subject with a _“Like the American state? Because we have our own Californie, and let me tell you it's not worth the visit, real ugly street. Ah, but you have la Promenade des Anglais next to it, and its by the sea so next time we'll go there!”_

Little by little, not being pressed, he opened up more. Never about what happened before, but what might happen next. Isaac suddenly started to formulate plans, finishing high school in France or back home, eventually going back in the U.S.

Instead of staring at his turned off phone when he couldn't sleep, he thought about what he would like to do after graduation. He didn't dream every night. It was a gamble he didn't like to make, but had no real choice in the matter.

When nightmares took him, he saw faceless girls and lifeless friends. He saw his dad, his mom, his brother, screaming at him and crowding him until he couldn't breathe. The few seconds after waking up, he contemplated the idea of dialing an old number to ask how to deal with the dreams.

He always shook off the idea and got up, joined Chris in the kitchen in companionable silence. He took a piece of paper and he drew, thinking about an old journal in his room with drawings in it.

And maybe that was it. Maybe he should try to do that, later. After high school, after going home, after the nightmares stopped, after he finally let himself really grieving, when he could finally think about the friends he still had back home. For now, he had a blank piece of paper and the strength of his denial.

 ▪

Days passed, and Isaac realized that what he wouldn't talk about with Camille, he wouldn't mind sharing with Chris. He started one morning, because their nights were sacred times that voices would shatter. He started, and then, he couldn't stop, everyday saying something, and Chris always listened, always tried to find something to answer. But Isaac always told stories of his human years. Beyond that was a sacred time that would shatter him if he voiced its stories.

 ▪

“ _We have a game night at my apartment with my boyfriend and some friends of us tonight. Wanna come?”_ read the message on messenger. Isaac even got himself a new facebook account with a false name, which he's pretty sure could be easily found by his old friends.

They probably did and Isaac sometimes wondered if it's out of respect or indifference that he still didn't have any messages telling him to “turn his fucking phone back on you stupid scarf wearing asshole” and “sorry about him, we really miss you man”. A part of him wanted that, the rest knew he wasn't ready for any of it.

“Ok”, he sent back. Game night, he thought, wasn't out of his comfort zone. Staying late doing something with new people would also change from the long nights waiting for the nightmares.

“I'm going out tonight.” Isaac announced to Chris who just came home after a two days trip Isaac wanted to ask about later

“With Camille?” asked the man, shaking his light jacket off his shoulders and throwing it on the couch's back. The apartment slowly got messier.

“Yeah, she's having a game night, thought it would be fun.”

Chris went inside the kitchen and Isaac heard the sound of the refrigerator door being open and shut before he came back in the living room a beer in hand. He sat in the armchair in front of Isaac and opened his bottle.

“That's nice.” simply answered Chris.

Isaac hesitated for a few second before rushing out his question, “We could go eat some socca together one of these days?”

Chris looked up, surprised at the suggestion. He gave Isaac a small smile, tipping his bottle with a nod.

“Could be nice. Haven't eaten that in years.”

Isaac felt his insides warm up. As much as they started to share more things, they didn't really do anything together outside the apartment. And he wanted that. Needed it. It was happening, and he hadn't felt this happy in a long time.

 

▪

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you liked it! Kudos or comments give me life ;)


	3. Run until you reach a fault line you can't jump over

**3 – Run until you reach a fault line you can't jump over**

 

Isaac was seating in a second hand couch that was weirdly more comfortable than it looked, waiting for the other guests to arrive. Camille let herself fall next to him, making him bounce a little, before stretching herself to the right to retrieve a tiny red box she threw on Isaac's lap.

“ _You know this game?_ ” she asked. 

He picked up the box and turned it over, took in the big black dot in the middle and the four clawed hands springing from it, the wolf's head in the center. Over the drawing, yellow letters spelled “ les Loups-Garous de Thiercelieux ” and it took Isaac a couple of seconds to process what he was seeing. 

The nervous chuckle he let out at the title was not one of his proudest moments, but Camille didn't seem to notice anything so he just turned to her and shook his head with what he hoped was a straight face. His heart was beating loudly against his ribcage.

“ _Well we'll explain it better tonight but basically everyone gets a card that they keep secret, telling them who they are. There's werewolves, who kill someone during the night and must be the last ones still alive, and villagers with special powers who have to find a kill the werewolves during the day and kill all of them._ ”

Isaac swallowed past the lump in his throat. He suddenly had a reminiscence of hunters convinced they were evil. He tried to calm down: this was just a game. And if he thought about it like that instead of getting lost in his past, he had to admit it was it was pretty funny how ironic the situation was.

He turned to Camille to ask her more about the game when the doorbell rang and he found himself thrown in a whirlwind of presentations and surrounded by eleven people around the small coffee table, only half of the names still in his mind and incapable of placing them on any of the faces.

They started to play while throwing bags of chips and peanuts at each other, and despite his sensitive hearing Isaac wasn't bothered by all the noise. It felt good, being surrounded by humans laughing and shouting at each other about insignificant things, even if the moment was tinged with the regret of the opportunity they never had to grow that kind of friendship with his first Pack.

One of the guys took the role of game master and lights were turned off as card were distributed. Isaac almost chocked with his spit when he saw he had a werewolf card, and shook of the past to concentrate on what was happening now.

“ _In the small village of Thiercelieux, night falls and cricket chirps. The quiet town sleeps, not yet aware of the new danger lurking in dark corners. The werewolves wake up._ ”

As the night went on, game after game, Isaac found himself laughing a lot, and he quickly realized how he tried to link every character to one of his friends but it wasn't a sad thought, for once. It was almost nostalgic.

Except when Le Chasseur was called. Then, a shard of glass pierced his heart as it conjured a face behind his eyelids and a name that wanted to be said

▪

The game night ended around three in the morning, and only because some of them had work a few hours later. Isaac got himself a lift to his apartment, and he was not surprised to find Chris up and working. The man raised his head, but Isaac didn't say a thing, just sat down in front of him and took a piece of paper.

The tip of the pencil approached the blank surface. Touched it. Stayed there. Isaac couldn't think of a thing to draw. He traced a line. Another. Nothing. So he dropped the pencil and put his head on his arms, closed his eyes, and tried desperately to think about the happy parts of the night instead of the pain it caused every time he let his guard down. Before he knew it, he was asleep.

In that dream, _werewolves are monsters lurking in the woods. A single path runs through it, a line of light bright like it's the sun itself, and on it walks a procession of humans, a witch, a little girl, hundreds of people. At the back, there's a girl with a silver band in her black hair and a bow in her hand. She looks into the forest and her eyes start a fire that changes the monsters into beautiful creatures, wolves with fur black as night._

_The procession goes on, and the girl stays back and crouches, getting an arm around Isaac wolf's back to whisper something into hiss ears that sounds like French. He can't understand a word. Suddenly, something red bursts out of the distorted village's street around them, and the ground shakes. Allison isn't there anymore, and Isaac falls to his knees, grasps his hair in his hands and howls. On the ground there's a card. The Hunter._

▪

The sun was coming up, sky and sea getting red. The clouds were on fire. Isaac took a sip of his burning hot tea.

The sound of unwrapping came from his left and a cereal bar appeared in his field of vision that he reflexively took.

“The sky looked just like that, the day Allison was born.” started Chris. Isaac didn't turn to look at him. “Sometimes now I think she would've been better off in another family. At the time the thought didn't even cross my mind.”

“She loved you.” finally said Isaac after a silence, watching the red orb rise on the horizon. It was an obvious statement, but something he felt was right to say. “Even when things were bad, she still wouldn't have traded you for a simpler life.”

“She loved you too, you know?” Chris answered, and when Isaac looked away to the fading traces of the night on his right, the hunter knew there was something painful there.

“She said-” the teen tried to say, his voice breaking. He took a deep breath. “When she died, she said...she looked at Scott and said that it was perfect, dying in her first love arms. She said she loved him.”

_Oh_ , Chris thought. There it was.

“Doesn't mean she didn't love you too. Yeah, Scott was special because it was her first. No one forgets that, good or bad.” Chris cleared his throat, feeling a surge of emotion twisting his insides. “But she did love you. She really did.”

Isaac finally looked at him, maybe because of the waver in the man's voice. Chris looked back at him, and something passed between them. A few seconds later, Isaac's face started crunching up and tears welled up in his eyes. Loud sobs ripped out of his throat, and Chris took the boy in his arms, silently crying with him.

That morning, as the colors changed and life flooded the streets, something started. Something like healing and forgiveness.

 

 

▪

▪

▪

 

 

_Pain_ , Isaac wrote on the back of a colorful postcard, _is like a shard of glass inside your heart. You feel it everytime you move, so you stay as still as possible. It's heavy, and some days you can carry it around, some days you can only lie down and struggle to breathe. You wonder what makes you keep going, and you think that maybe it's the pain itself that keeps you from closing your eyes._

_The beach here is made of rocks but a new friend drove me to one made of sand, a few towns over. I loved it. I found some pieces of polished glass there. When I look at it, I find hope. I think that this is what pain will become eventually after a lot of tears and time, not sharp edges cutting your heart but a polished stone. It's still heavy, but maybe it's so you don't forget what you lost._

_I hope you all let yourself heal, like I'm starting to do, and I'm not only talking about last year. That's for you, Derek. We all deserve it. Make of your pain a collection of colorful stones, a reminder of the good times that were, not of the bad that ended it._

_The cards that I send you come from a game that made me think of us. We don't exactly fit the roles, but it's still a little funny. I'll let you all decide who's who. The Captain is the head of the village. The Little Girl is the one that spies on everyone else during the night for the knowledge. The Old Man is basically just the old man. The Witch chooses to heal or not the dead. And the Fox can find the wolves. The last card is the Hunter._

_That's it! Write me back! I'm not really up for instantaneous conversations yet. But you can be sure I'll come home when I'm ready. I won't forget you._

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The end! I hope I made you travel a little between the angst haha tell me if what you think :)  
> And you can find me on [tumblr](http://kinsbournescream.tumblr.com/) :D


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